Arbitrary handles are distinct in that they are not translated to session persistent identifiers internally, to entity names in AutoLISP, and so on. They are stored as handles. When translation of handle values are translated in drawing-merge operations, arbitrary handles are ignored.

In all environments, arbitrary handles can be exchanged for entity names of the current drawing by means of the handent functions. A common usage of arbitrary handles is to refer to objects in external DXF and DWG files.